For years, photographer Stephanie Sinclair, 43, has travelled the world documenting the practice of child marriage with her camera. Now, a non-profit project she started is giving former child brides a voice, hoping to convince authorities around the world to clamp down on the practice.
Too Young To Wed (Tooyoungtowed.org), an international NGO, raises funds, educates people about the prevalence of child marriages around the world and why they are harmful, and promotes activism and protests aimed at outlawing the marrying off of underage girls – often to grown men. The organisation estimates that somewhere in the world, a girl is forced into a marriage every two seconds.
Stephanie has been photographing the girls trapped in these situations for several years to raise awareness of their plight and agitate for change, but this year she had another brainwave – put former child brides behind the camera, rather than in front of it.
“The idea was simple: to introduce storytelling through photography to help them better realise their self-worth and the value of their voice,” Stephanie told reporters. “Aside from technical skills, when you teach photography, you are helping students feel confident about themselves and the way they see the world. Our goal was to help them understand that what have to say is important, that /they/ are important… We wanted to open their minds and expose them to new possibilities for their own futures.”
Her first workshop, held in January this year in Kenya and featuring girls who had never taken photographs before, proved so successful that Too Young To Wed is now planning to hold photography workshops for other former child brides regularly, in the many other regions of the globe where forced child marriages are an issue.
To learn more or get involved, visit Tooyoungtowed.org.